My Grandmother was an Alien?

     Yesterday I was doing a fairly random search on the Family Search website, hoping to find some information on my maternal grandmother, Mary Hughes nee Brennan. I was hoping perhaps to find something from the UK in the period of say 1910 to 1950.

     After wading through several dozen false leads, I found something more promising: a reference to a Mary Hughes from Britain turning up on an immigration list for passengers and crew at the Port of New York in 1955. I had already looked at a couple of similar leads but those turned out to be a cruise liner stewardess and a Bible Society lady of some sort. This time I hit pay-dirt.

RMS Queen Mary at New York c.1960

     The "details" page wasn't a lot more helpful than the basic lead info but there was a link to an image of the original form - in this case a page from the Manifest of In-bound Passengers (Aliens) for the RMS Queen Mary arriving at the Port of New York, October 4, 1955. Right away I noticed that Mary T. Hughes was immediately preceded on the form by a Peter Hughes, and that both listed 3070 Decatur Ave. in the Bronx as their address or intended address. 

     My maternal grandfather was a Peter Hughes ... check! And before my grandparents moved to Toronto c. 1970, they were living on Decatur Ave. in the Bronx ... check! So, this passenger manifest definitely shows my grandparents arriving in New York in 1955. It's an amazing feeling to actually find and see a piece of family history online. 

     A number of questions and/or avenues for further investigation remain:

• this can't have been my grandparents' first entry into the United States; we know that both my grandparents worked for a time for the British ambassador to the UN c. 1951+ Was this their re-entry to the US as new immigrants, or had they merely taken a trip back to England (where my mother was still living at the time)?

• my grandparents lived for many years on Decatur Ave. in the Bronx, but so too did at least two of my grandmother's siblings (Rose Burke and Owen Brennan); so had my grandparents already rented an apartment for themselves on Decatur, or were they staying with relatives?

• my grandparents' travel documents are listed as I.866641 (Peter) and I.866651 (Mary) - are these British passport numbers, US travel visa, or something else?

Here's the Family Search weblink for anyone interested seeing the page from the Queen Mary alien passenger list: https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-34009-59786-24?cc=1923888

An Adventure in Geneaology: First Steps

     I must be getting old. I appear to have reached that point in life when you suddenly become intensely interested in your ancestry: who were your ancestors; when and where did they live; who are you connected to, etc. 

     Of course, now that I'm interested in these topics almost all the people who could have answered my questions - and would probably have been overjoyed to do so - are now gone. The irony of the generational cycle.